De la Peña. The Spanish-English Language War.pdf

THE SPANISH-ENGLISH LANGUAGE

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Wystan de Ia Pena

(Abridged version of research prepared for the inaugural lecture of the Fundaci6n Fernando Rielo Professorial Chair, 1999-2000, delivered in March 2001) - And what's the name of those little islands? - Well, Philippine Islands! - Aha! so those are the notorious Philippines from which come so much Spanish when, according to what I hear, their inhabitants don't speak that language? (Quote from an untitled Rizal manuscript featuring dialogue between God and the Archangel Gabriel; cited from Camagay: 193).

Introduction The biggest news item that inaugurated the year 1901 was Emilio Aguinaldo's capture by American forces. It signaled for the then U.S. military government, after two years of PhilippineAmerican hostilities, the beginning of the end of Filipino armed resistance. American proclamation of Filipino military defeat would come in 1903 with Miguel Malvar's surrender, after U.S. forces adopted a strategy which would be called "hamletting" during the Vietnam War. The period which followed the collapse of the Aguinaldoled armed Filipino resistance to American colonial rule (Muslim resistance would continue on into the second decade of the American regime) has been aptly named in Philippine historiography as the decade of suppressed nationalism. It is a crucial period, seen from the perspective of nationalist discourse.

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This paper examines articulation of that discourse, specifically that written in Spanish, during, but not limited to the first decade of American rule. The reading of materials from this period is informed by an interest in the tension in the language arena, particularly in the articulation of ideology. The then growing marginalization of Spanish by English and the introduction of American culture serve as the main backdrop against which the issues are seen.

The Imposition of English and the Discourse of Colonial Tutelage For American officials, the 1898 Treaty of Paris meant work to convince the Filipinos of the merits of U.S. rule. This involved "reconciling" themselves to Filipinos (Salamanca: 23) and making the latter accept U.S. colonial policies and sugarcoated hegemonic practices as part of their "recolonization."

Central to this "reconciliation" discourse is the explanation for U.S. intervention in a post-revolutionary Philippines: the American response to the responsibility of "educating" Filipinos for "self-government" and democracy. In the words of President William McKinley, U.S. presence should be directed to establishing a government "for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands" which would conform to Filipino customs, habits and biases, subject to American "principles ... [and] practical rules of government" as Filipinos "have, unfortunately, been denied the experience possessed by us" (Sullivan: 95). One can always look at these twin concepts of "selfgovernment" and "tutelage" as the 20th century version of the Spanish line given 400 years earlier: that the conquistadores' coming to the Philippines, symbolized by the cross and the sword, was meant to carry out a civilizing and christianizing mission. So Filipinos went through a second round of colonization. As the first had been 400 years earlier, this one came justified as a God-given mission to white imperialists to provide them civilization and Christianity.

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The arrival of the Thomasites marked the beginning of institutional imposition of English in the educational system. It is interesting to note that the coming of American teachers into the Philippines happened even at the height of armed hostilities, lending credence to the observation that they formed America's "second front" in the Philippine-American War (Kiwell-Gabriel: 247). Central to the Thomasites' task of educating Filipinos for self-government was the issue of language, a matter already decided upon by higher authorities and put down as official policy by the Second Philippine Commission, better known as the Taft Commission, in 1901 through Act No. 74. With Spanish hardly entrenched at the grassroots level- the 1903 census would reveal only ten percent of the population were hispanoparlantes, or Spanish-speaking, and this tenth would be the important ilustrado sector - and no single language common in the different regions, English was seen as the sole unifying language for the archipelago. The language prescription applied for both upland and lowland Filipinos. In 1902, Dr. David P. Barrows, in his report as director of the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, recommended that Igorots be taught English so Philippine society would be "liberalized, freed and elevated" (Fry: 108). The colonial rhetoric pushing for the teaching of English surely benefitted in no small measure from a 1903 report of a Chicago-based medical doctor, David Doherty, as the document got its way into the U.S. congressional record. Despite writing for the Anti-Imperialist League, Doherty endorsed the colonial government and, in a change of heart, considered the teaching of English a blessing to Filipinos (Gleeck: 72, 74). Then Secretary of Public Instruction Bernard Moses (19011902) likewise championed the compulsory teaching of English an action educational officials recognized as cutting "loose from all established traditions" (Bureau of Public Schools: 232). But he

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took his idea a step further . Equating English as the key to "advancement" in the Philippines, he pointed out that Americans and Filipinos, in order to become "more intimate" should share the same language and literature (Fry: 109). Clearly, the American line of thinking completely disregarded the possibility of Filipinos losing their identity. Even a French journalist saw that the "self-government" tutelage discourse of the Americans meant transforming Filipinos into political clones. Only after this condition was met would they have proved themselves "worthy" of independence (Pinon: 92).:

In the eyes of the American, the Filipino will be deserving of freedom only when he has become an American, when he has renounced all that he retains of his Oriental nature and all that he was bequeathed by his Spanish masters The Americans did not deny this. As early as the time of the Schurman Commission, colonial authorities recognized that getting Filipinos to accept American rule meant alienating them from their Hispanic-Malayan heritage and transforming them (and making them accept the label) into brown Americans. So was born the concept of "little brown brothers." Part of being "little brown Americans" meant studying American history and culture, singing American songs of patriotism, and striving to think like Americans. For the early 20th century Filipino, that was a novel experience. Here was a new colonizer who appeared to be the complete opposite of its predecessor, who embraced concepts which were anathema to the latter - like access to education and acquisition of the colonizer's language - and, more importantly, "assimilation," described as "benevolent." It is important to grasp the significance of this development. During the Spanish period, with majority of the population denied reasonable opportunities for education - and in the process, socioeconomic advancement - access to the educational system during

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t~e early American regime meant for a lot of ordinary Filipinos a chance for social mobility.

Hardly half a century later, American colonization would thus be viewed in a very positive light, compared to the negativity accorded to 300 years of Spanish rule.

Spanish vs. English With an educational system which imposed English as medium of instruction, English slowly wrested the upperhand from Spanish. In nationalist historian Renata Constantino's slightly exaggerated language, English became "the language of business and politics while Spanish retreated into the social halls as the language of the aristocracy" (Constantino: 45-46). This change of language of power is one of the nodal points in the history of the formation of a national identity. Constantino, in his biography of Claro M. Recto, observes how the latter seemed to equate the weakness of Filipino nationalism to the elimination of Spanish as the language of government and education. According to Recto, had Spanish been preserved, "our Philippine nationalism, under the protection of so stout a shield, would be better able to defend itself and combat more advantageously against American imperialism" (Constantino: 32). One thus has to realize that central to the American remodelling of the Filipino was the reconfiguration of linguistic make-up. For turn-of-the-century ilustrados realizing the repercussions of the cultural onslaught that English represented, this meant giving up an academic and intellectual tradition which served as the basis of their professional training. It is from this framework that one should view Filhispanic writing on the American cultural "invasion." For the ilustrados, everything Spain had left in the country became appropriated and labelled Filipino. In one fell swoop, things Hispanic on Philippine soil - from institutipns like churches and fiestas, to concepts like palabra de honor and amor propio -- became part of the Filipino cultural patrimony.

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No less than Palma, using the pseudonym Resurrecto, would give linguistic flesh and blood to this idea. Using the pseudonym Resurrecto, he wrote for El Nuevo Dia on May 5, 1900 in an article entitled "El Alma de Espana" (Palma, 1914: 127-129):

jAU.n vive la vieja alma de Espana aqui! En todas partes veo su sombra, proyecttindose como desde una inmensa altura y ocupandolo todo. Rastreo su injluencia en todas nuestras poblaciones, en los monumentos, en los templos, en las calles, en los cuadros de las casas, en los libros que aprendemos, en nuestras maneras, en el lenguaje, hasta en lo ultimo, en nuestros vicios y defectos. Se nos ha trasvasado en las venas la sangre de aquella Espana decadente que nosotros despojamos aqui .... La sombra de Espana peregrinara por nuestra tierra anos y anos. Aun hablaremos su lenguaje los que crecimos odiandola por sus instituciones y sus hombres, los que con la pasi6n de la libertad deshicimos su cabeza con el hacha de la revoluci6n .... Por esto, me empequenece el hablar mal de Espana y los espanoles; siento rubor y vergiienza cuando injurian a esa vieja naci6n los hijos de esta tierra .... Espana noes ya mas que una sombra en tierra filipina: injuriar a una sombra es propio de pequenos y cobardes. jSaludo a esa vieja Espana!. [underscoring added] Two years later and under the same pseudonym, but this time writing for El Renacimiento on May 17, 1902, Palma would wax poetic in and write in an article entitled "Hispania": "Nosotros, los filipinos, espanoles un tiempo, espanoles aun en la lengua, en las maneras yen los vicios ....despues de la cattistrofe, de las duras vicisitudes de nuestro proceso hist6rico, queda en las nobles almas filipinas, un recuerdo piadoso y adorable para la que aqui fue, durante tres siglos, soberana y reina de los destinos del pueblo (Palma 1914: 179).

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. El Renacimiento provided a significant bulk of this type of anti-American literature, especially those writings defending Filhispanic culture. This was inevitable with the presence in its staff of leading Filhispanic writers. In the 1930s, the newspaper would receive this recognition in one of the early Filipino narratives on Philippine joumalism(Coronel1994, citing Jesus Z. Valenzuela: 89): [it] campaigned for the use of Spanish as the official language of the Philipines, not because it wanted to perpetuate a sad past ... but because it did not approve of the implantation of American sovereignty in the Islands. Its anti-American policy was based on the belief that the Latin culture of the Filipinos was far superior to American civilization. It looked down upon American ideas as gross and sordid materialism weakening the spiritual and idealistic strength of the people To better understand El Renacimiento's position, one has to see the framework from which Filhispanic writers operated. A case in point is Palma. Two and a half decades after his article above, he still fondly spoke of Spain in his inaugural speech as the newlyinstalled president of the University of the Philippines (Palma 1985: 235). Palma's contemporary and fellow Filhispanic writer Manuel Bernabe echoed the Filhispanic writer's thinking that the separation from Spain was merely political, not cultural; that the revolution, a divinely-arranged event, represented the birth pangs of a nation. This is seen in Bernabe's poem, Filipinas a Espana: "Dios ha dispuesto

el termino del plaza/ y ya es la hora de romper ellazo/ que nos uni6 tres siglos, jMadre Espana!" (Bernabe: 63, 67) But this separation did not come about without the birth of an " Indo-hispanic soul" Balmori sings about in the poem Blas6n:

Soy un bardo indo-hispano. En mi pecho cristiano/Mi coraz6n es vasa donde mezclada estti/La sangre de Legaspi el Capitan hispano/Con la sangre tagala de la hija del Raja (Coronel 1994: 112).

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Despite the imposition of English already a fait accompli by 1913, Fernando Ma. Guerrero (1952: 73) would still write for that year's celebration of Dia de Hispanidad : Te hablo en tu lengua: mis

versos/ te dirtin que hay un amor/ que, en la hecatomba preterita/ su raigambre conserv6/ en lo mtis hondo y arcana de mi pecho/mi raza ador6 la gloria/ del bello idioma espanol/ que parlan aun los Quijotes/ de esta malaya region/ donde quieren nuevas Sanchos/ que parlemos en saj6n ("A Hispania"). 1 One Filipino intellectual would even insist that Spanish would remain with the intelligentsia, even when English shall have become the predominant language, because "it is in this language

that we commune with Rizal and our greatest heroes; because in this language the glorious pages of our history are written; because in this language we expressed in the past and we express in the present our longings and our ideals; because in its vibrant syllables we utter our indignation and our protest against any menace to the self-assertion of the Filipino soul" (Luz: 87) American authorities missed all these sentiments at the time, blinded either by their "civilizing" discourse or their notion of the superiority of their Anglo-Saxon culture over the Latin culture Spain represented. This latter idea merited an answer from Pardo de Tavera in an article (" El Alma Filipina") published in El Renacimiento Pardo de Tavera, 1913):

En la actualidad algunos antrop6logos consideran como inferior Ia raza espanola comparada con la anglo-sajona; pero los que miran a Espana, no en el momenta actual sino en la totalidad de su historia, no puede bajo ningun concepto admitir Ia inferioridad de raza, anque admitan la actual inferioridad de aquel pueblo. Efectivamente, la raza espanola no es inferior; lo que hay es que su educaci6n exclusiva bajo un gobierno de dogmatismo politico y religioso ha hecho de Espana un pais con alma tradicionalista y verdaderamente conservadora

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Even as late as 1925, Palma also defended, albeit not uncritically, the Spanish educational system which reared him professionally, although he would describe it as "limited" in scope and bannering ideals that "Juui graum to be obsolete and of little use" (Palma, 1985: 212). "Progress" was precisely the concept American colonial officials insisted they were bringing to Filipinos. In 1912, in explaining the "progress" signified by imposing English, Secretary of Public Instruction Newton Gilbert parrots the stock line given a decade earlier: "Spanish was the language of the nation against whom the PhHippines had been in armed rebellion, and no doubt there would have been vigorous protests, if only for sentimental reasons, against its adoption." (Philippine Commission and the Philippine Legislature: 632). What Gilbert misses is that Spain to post-Spanish rule ilustrados, Filhispanic writers especially, was a dichotomy. It was either Madre Espana or Espana Negra: Madre Espana, the Spain seen as the cultural mother from which the Philippines got its Christian heritage and Hispanic character; and Espana Negra, the Spain of the soberania monacal fame, which Filipino revolutionaries resoundingly defeated in 1898. Guerrero, Bernabe and Balmori were just three of those · Filhispanic writers writing for El Renacimiento who harped on the cultural mother-imperialist dichotomy that was Spain for the ilustrados during the American period. 2 Th.s dichotomy has been easily forgotten, a fact seen when one compares the writings on Madre Espana with the volume of the literature on Espana Negra. But it is a dichotomy that has survived the complete marginalization by English of the Spanish language. At the heart of this so-called Hispanic contribution to Philippine culture is Spanish. But decades later, with a new generation at the helm, it would be maligned as the colonizer's language, the icon of a Philippine colonial past. Ironically, this discourse would be principally expressed in English, it being another colonizer's language conveniently forgotten. It would also be a discourse that would figure in-the 1960s debate for the removal of Spanish ·in the university curriculum.

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During the early years of American rule, imposing English depended heavily on the pensionado program - in which no less than 209 men and women would benefit during the years 19031912 (Caoili: 311) - and the creation of an American-sponsored public school system. The establishment of the University of the Philippines exemplified the latter measure. From the perspective of linguistic-cultural indoctrination, the pensionado program was a masterstroke in the strategy to marginalize the Spanish culture and intellectual tradition and create Americanized converts among Filipino youths. A Spanish scholar would later observe, not without a tinge of regret (Piftar: 8-9):

La nueva metr6poli aspir6 a desterrar del pais, en la medida en que fuera factible, todo recuerdo de Espana. Desde el punta de vista humano, era preciso forjar lo que hoy se llama la "new generation," una juventud educada en el modo de ser norteamericano, a la cual, cuando llegase a la madurez, podrfa entregarse, sin escrupulos ni resabios, el gobierno de la naci6n .... atrajeron, como era de suponer, a la juventud universitaria de principios de siglo. Era una juventud que en casa habfa aprendido el Castellano, pero que iba a regresar a Filipinas, procedente de los Estados Unidos, con un nuevo bagaje cultural. 3 Corollary to this, the observation that it was deliberate policy that not a few of the pensionados carne from rich and influential families (Doeppers: 163) comes as no surprise, if one considers the fact that these families belonged to the ten percent of the population which was hispanoparlante. On the domestic front, a similar indoctrination was happening. The University of the Philippines became the secular counterpoint to the Catholic and Spanish-established University of Santo Tomas, the acknowledged champion of the Spanish language. The Spanish religious resented the imposition of English, which, by the second decade of American rule, provided much competition for their financially-strapped schools (Doeppers: 14).

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But unable to stem the tide, and in an effort to preserve its enrollment, institutions like the Universidad de Santo Tomas, Ateneo de Manila, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, La Concordia, La Inmaculada decided to adopt English (Peralta-Imson: 33). This was not, however, without tragic consequences (Pifiar: 9):

La misma Universidad de Santo Tomas, baluarte de catolicismo y hispanismo en Filipinas, se via constrefiida y parece ser que obligada par el director de la Oficina de Enseiinnza de la colonia a abandonar las clases en castellano y n aceptar el ingles como idioma de instrucci6n. La arden era tan radical y exigia una aplicaci6n tan severa e inmediata, que el rector hubo de jubilar, precipitadamente, a profesores de Derecho, Farmacia y Medicinn que no conocfan el ingles, pero que, en sus asignaturas respectivas, estaban reputados como eminencies. What the Spanish religious running sectarian schools failed, or refused, to see, were the repercussions of the rapid changes of their time, a situation aggravated by the presence of the older generation, particularly the influential elite, still conducting a significant part of their socio-economic and political transactions in Spanish (Doeppers: 60-61). The case of the Centro Escolar de Senoritas -now known as the Centro Escolar University - sometime in 1915 illustrates the resistance from private schools. The school opened one academic year with a program in which all, but one, of the numbers were in Spanish. For this, the school received a letter of reprimand from the Secretary of Public Instruction. In what award-winning Filhispanic writer Enrique Fernandez Lumba would call in 1940 as "hermosa acto de rebeldin de Maria Clara," school officials passed a resolution declaring their symbolic "separation" from the authority of the Department of Public Instruction. This triggered a series of reactions at the national level -

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once the incident hit the newspapers- which led to strong expressions in favor of Spanish . (Fermmdez Lurnba: 12-13). But by the time of the Commonwealth, English was already a characteristic differentiating the younger set from their elders. Filipino psychologists now recognize how a new elite came about during the American period simply by projecting the alleged superiority of American culture and spreading the impression throughout the country that mastery of English was a trait of an educated person (Enriquez and Protacio-Marcelino: 269). The English language-based educational system also resulted in the emergence of a select group of students which would become the first generation of Filipino writers in English. This would lead to further marginalization of Philippine letters in Spanish and block what could have been the early rise to prominence by any of the literatures in the native languages. Moreover, these writers' accomplishments would be erroneously used as a yardstick for Filipino literary achievement. (Lumbera: 90). After more than a decade of mentoring Filipinos, American authorities felt the need for an assessment of their efforts in spreading the English language. For this purpose, the measurement unit would be literacy. In 1912, the Philippine Commission reported literacy at only 1.47 %, but this data covered only achievement in English and Spanish., both foreign languages. This finding, which did not factor in literacy in the native languages, also suppressed the possibility that Filipinos were more literate than Americans (Ford: 362). Without exac t s tatistics available, the Philippine Commission put actual illiteracy in the Philippines at less than 8 percent, if literacy in the different native languages is considered. One such literacy assessment came from The Ford Report on tl!e Situation in the Philippines (1913). The report, using anecdotal evidence to support the assertion that Filipino literacy was much higher than believed, describes a scene from a bookstore (Ford: 362-363):

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There is undoubtedly a considerable body ofliterature in dialect - poetry, drama, fiction, grammars, dictionaries and elementary textbooks. Piles of paper backed literature in dialect may be seen in the native textbooks in Manila, most of it of recent imprint. I noticed in a bookstore an announcement - in dialect only - of a lecture on Socialism, Communism, Anarchy, and Collectivism. According to official classification, this lecturer would rank as illiterate unless in addition to his own language he can read and write either in English or Spanish. The Ford Report contradicts official declarations of widespread Filipino desire to learn English and said Spanish remained the language of social intercourse. To highlight this, Ford stresses the absence of Filipino-owned English-langua ge newspapers. Even those newspapers and other periodicals in English - obviously to secure the numbers game needed for survival - had to come out with a Spanish section, it said (Ford: 367). Ford's travel around the country also convinced him that Spanish still held sway among the populace. His report seems to show nothing had been changed since a government report said in 1908 that Spanish continued" to be the most prominent and important language spoken in political, journalistic and commercial circles." Filipinos would merely switch to English when talking to an American, Ford said. (Ford: 365) The Ford Report so.m ehow confirms the assessment made in 1904- but published in 1905- by another academic (Salamanca: 72):

enthusiasm of the natives in learning English is largely a myth .. ..the truth is that an adequate knowledge of English is possessed by very few even of the educated classes in the Philippines, while the proportion of the population which comprehends as much as a few simple words is extremely small ... the desire to learn English ... is non-existent or limited to a very small class.

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Interestingly, El Renacimiento reported on August 3, 1908 on the Philippine Teachers' Association general meeting. Of three main speakers, one spoke in English, the other in Spanish and the third in Tagalog. Reporting on the last two speeches, the newspaper merely discussed the content, the manner of delivery not considered important. That was not the case for the speech in English, which had to be pointed out as having been delivered in correcto y bien pronunciado ingles. II

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If anything, aside from indicating Filipino curiosity over English, as seen in the desire to see communicative competence in the new language, the report highlights the populace's strong consciousness over the phonetic dissimilarity it has with Tagalog and the other Philippine languages.

On the same day of the report, El Renacimiento illustrated how the lengua de Ceroantes - not the idioma miltoniano - was the language of choice for nationalist discourse. In a lengthy article on reactions to the June 19, 1908 speech by Speaker Osmefia at the Philippine Assembly advocating independence for the Philippines, it underlined pro-Spanish rhe.toric in the text of resolutions of organizations supporting the Osmef\.a speech. The report quoted from the 195-signature resolution of the Kabinataan Navotas which decided that: esta resoluci6n sea vertida al castellano para la remision y publicaci6n de una copia de la misma en los peri6dicos de la capital del archipielago filipino; Acuerda asimismo que tanto el original, como la traducci6n de la presente resoluci6n sea guardada en los archivos de la asociaci6n para grata memoria de sus miembros. II

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The two other resolutions - from the town councils of Lawag, Ilocos Norte Guly 18) and of Obando, Bulacan Guly 31) indicated, among others, the nationwide influence of El Renacimiento, its role as venue for the expression of nationalist discourse. The July 18 Lawag resolution said that que se envien capias del presente acuerdo al secretario de la Asamblea Filipina, al Honorable Speaker ... y par ultimo, se envie otra a los peri6dicos El Renacimiento y II

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Asnmblea Filipinapara su insersi6n. " While the July 31 Obando town council resolved that" .. .remitiendose capias de esta resoluci6n, una al citndo Honorable Speaker para su satisfacci6n, y otra al peri6dico de El Renacimiento para su debida publicaci6n." Conclusion America's military arrival in the Philippines is but a continuation of its westward imperialist expansion beyond California. Even before Commodore George Dewey's armada knifed through the waters of Manila Bay in May 1898 to destroy Admiral Patricio Montojo' s decrepit fleet, a fitting symbol of the then Spanish might in the Philippines, U.S. military and economic interests had already crossed the Pacific and made its presence felt in Hawaii and in Samoa.

American expansionist discourse thus continued to unfold: from the Monroe Doctrine in the early 1800s that led to military interventions in newly-independent Latin American states, to the Manifest Destiny which justified annexation of northern Mexican territory, and eventually to Benevolent Assimilation, a few months after the Philippine-American War broke out in 1899. During the first decade of the 1900s, this incipient hegemony came in the form of the implantation of American democratic ideals in the Philippines, a project since called missionary democracy (Bello, Kinley, and Elinson: 38). A century ago, missionary democracy premised itself on the supposed need of Filipinos to submit to American tutelage to learn self-government, an idea that can only come from an imperialist bias and a white supremacist attitude inescapably evident in American thinking of that period. The racist content of American rhetoric on the Philippines at the time - a product of the misapplication of scientific thought during the late 19th century - coincided with what is now considered the lowest point of race relations in the United States (Van Ells: 608). All the aforementioned examples boil down to the issue of America having the superior culture; hence, it should bear the white man's burden and teach Filipinos the ABCs of democratic existence.

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This thinking conveniently ignores the fact that even before the lopsided Battle of Manila Bay that fateful day of May 1, 1898, Filipinos already had a government, a legislature, a constitution, and a set of laws, not to mention arts and letters. After the revolution against Spain came the war against the United States, a war the U.S. propaganda machine boasted would be over in two weeks. It is this war which would show Filipinos an erstwhile hidden side of McKinley's "Benevolent Assimilation" policy declaration. Ironically, articulation of those "benevolent aims" involved the use of racist epithets. No less than then President Theodore Roosevelt had a racist vocabulary to refer to Filipinos: "Tagal bandits," "Malay bandits," "Chinese halfbreeds," "savages," "barbarians," " a wild and ignorant people" (Bain: 76, 88). This racist name-calling has its historical context, a carry-over of social conditions in the United States (Zinn: 307-308). :

It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strangespeaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality ofwar was thus added the brutality of racial hostility. The significance of the historical reality that the first real encounter of Filipinos on a national scale with the United States was through its military machine should not be overlooked. True, there were American merchants operating in the Philippines during the Spanish period, but they were few and limited to the exportoriented crops like abaca (hemp) and sugar. Just like Worcester, who had come to the Philippines as a scientist during the Spanish period and was looked upon as an "expert" on the country, these merchants became sources of information to the initial batch of American colonialists (Owen: 102).

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It would be left to the American military- veterans of much action against American Indians during the thirty years prior to its arrival in the Philippines - to introduce America to the Filipinos. Unfortunately, it had to be done through war. Even up to the second decade of American rule, one only has to look at violent events in Muslim Mindanao to see that the military played an important role in paving the way for civilian-led colonization.

The reality that the military was, and is, an important instrument for social change cannot be overlooked. In the words of later theoreticians, an ideological state apparatus. In Americancontrolled Philippines, that is especially true. By bringing in its own set of thinking and beliefs, it helped in no small way in articulating and playing out American colonial ideology. Filipino counterpoint to this racial discourse was not wanting. But the Filipino reply focused more on the issues of its aborted republic, America's anti-constitutional imperialist venture in the Philippines and the defense of Fil-hispania. El Renacimiento provided the forum for the articulation of Filipino sentiments on all those issues. In the wake of the Worcester libel case, it even advocated that the Philippines allied itself with Japan, which was then giving Washington some jitters (Gleeck: 133). Part of this Filipino anti-hegomonizing discourse is the Filhispanic rhetoric against the American cultural invasion. In attacking and warning against the dangers of the entry of American cultural practices, Filhispanic writers - especially those writing for newspapers like El Renndnziento saw themselves as the vanguards of the true Filipino cultural and intellectual tradition, a tradition forged in the Spanish colonial schools and later, in the century for the ilustrados, in Europe. The discursive power inherent in history-writing, in having one's version of events declared or accepted as the official - or the correct - version of events is a fact which Filipino historians know very well. Four decades of American control have resulted in the mass indoctrination of Filipinos that U.S. colonization was the better colonial experience.

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This meant sidelining the Philippine-American War- the war which saw officer veterans of the Civil War and the Indian Wars commanding the expeditionary troops to the Philippines - into a minor historical event, and pointing instead to the revolution against Spain as the event to remember Filipino bravery and patriotism. This is where the discursive power of historiography comes in. An important element to that historiography is the language used to write it. As one last example to show how a historian's ideological position marginalizes or privileges events, one only has to look at Golay's (read: American/English) narrative on the El Renncimiento libel case. It only merited a sentence from the 549-page book (Golay: 189). The uproar in the 1990s among Filipino historians over Inventing n Hero: The Posthumous Re-creation of Andres Bonifacio, which questioned the documentary sources on nationalist hero Andres Bonifacio, is another. In a country where historical consciousness (except for events happening in the recent past) is not a strong point among its predominantly-young citizenry, the centennial of the PhilippineAmerican War passed by without much commemmorative activities compared to the pomp-filled celebration of the centennial of the June 12, 1898 Declaration of Independence.

This historical amnesia can largely be aftributed to direct American influence in Philippine historiography up to the 1940s. It is an influence responsible for the strong differentiation being made between the revolution against Spain and the" insurrection" against the United States (Ileto: 242). Key to this differentiation is the matter of language. Written in English, mainstream Philippine historiography would inevitably fall prey to American historical biases and influences. One is reminded of this influence at the 102nd anniversary of the start of the Philippine-American War, when a Filipino journalist makes the painful observation regarding the historical amnesia with which Filipinos have treated the conflict. In an article

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wrongly suggesting that American cultural and political contributions to the Philippines (the Thomasites, urban architecture and a road system) counterbalance American military abuses, the w riter concluded (Tuazon: 20):

Today, 102 years after the Philippine-American War, Filipinos hardly know about the brutality of that war. Instead, Filipinos continue to look up to America as the pioneer of the country's learning and democrati c institutions. Clearly, it is the historical discourse in English which has emerged as the winner.

Endnotes 1

Interestingly, non-hispanic American culture observes this as "Columbus Day," effectively e liminating the cultural dimension behind the celebration by focusing instead on a historical figure than on the significance of the event.

2

Neither is this dichotomy of Spain a concept alien to Spanish w riters themselves. Javier G6mez de la Serna writes in the preface of Retana's biography ofRizal: "jHay dos Espaiias! Una grande, generosa, con cualidades legendarias ensalzadas en todo el p!aneta, con sus legiones de caballeros, heroes en el hagar, en el mundo, sacrificando sGrenos la vida por un nmor, par un ideal, por una disciplina militar o cientifica: la Espana que am6 a Rizal hnsta la muerte, par la que pidi6 ira Cuba pam nsistir en los hospi tales a nuestros heridos, y ilncin donde se dirigfn oficinlmente cuando le apresaron ... Y otrn Espmln, 11egrn, Ia que le apres6 en esa hora gloriosa de su vida; Espaiin cada vez 111rb rcducidn, tJIIt' forman malos e ineptos, crueles yfnmiticos, cnbezns sin lzonra y lta11rn:> ~ ill cn/wzn, con ln que hay que tener 11i In complicidnd del ~ ilcn cio" Gavier Gomez de la Serna, in Retana, 1958: v).

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Piiiar suggests the employment of the same "new generation" strategy to preserve Spanish:" ... no basta con hacer del caste/lana una nsignaturn, hny que crearen lo que hoy se llama In 'new generation' un clima de ntenci6n primero, de simpntia despues, de franca y cnriiiosa amistad nuis tarde hncia todo aquello que en Filipinns pone de relieve su fisonomfa hispanica .... 56/o asi e/ castellano brillarei de nuevo y sin hostilidad en Ins is/as Filipinas. Conocido y amado como un idioma propio, no sera necesario imponerlo como asignaturn en las escuelas elementales, en la enseiianza secundaria yen la superior, porque, como ern, sera otra vez ellenguaje de la familia, el que se habla en la calle yen el negocio, el que se utiliza, como sigue en gran parte utilizrindose, para reznr, el que se emplea habitualmente y sin menoscabo de nadie como media de instrucci6n" (23, 30).

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